A chimpanzee and two trainees could run her!
So, you buy a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) for your puter.
You hook it up.
Then, a power outage or brownout hits…
POOF! Your puter reboots.
“Hang on”, you think, “Wasn’t my battery backup supposed to prevent this?”
Yes, it was… But there are a few things you need to check to make things work nicely…
So there you are, minding your own business.
You try to restart your Windows 10 puter, and you end up with the new Sad Face Blue Screen of Death!
At the bottom of the screen, you see:
Stop Code: 0xc000021a
No matter what you do (like the automatic Startup Repair), you appear to be sunk… Windows just won’t boot up anymore.
What to do?
If you use Ubuntu Desktop, using a USB stick is a piece of cake. You just plug it in, read/write files, and yank it out again.
But what about Ubuntu Server?
Try the same thing, and you end up with a USB stick that can only be accessed by root. Well, that’s probably not what you want!
There are several ways to solve this problem, but by far the easiest – believe it or not – is to add a touch of Windows…
A lot of people these days are talking about protecting their online privacy.
We have hearings going on, threats of breaking up Facebook and other Big Tech companies, data leaks, and so on.
Many people are going so far as to boycott Google (which is easier said than done).
But so far, no one – except Mozilla – is talking about the biggest threat to online privacy: Browser Fingerprints.
Yet another new version of Windows 10!
A new update to Windows 10 was released just a few days ago, and once again the rollout was quite smooth.
The difference this time was that 1909 isn’t really a “Feature Update”.
It installs very quickly and changes… well, pretty much nothing!
Let’s take a quick look.
For those of us who don’t like webmail because storing all our data in the The Cloud just seems like a Really Bad Idea, the best e-mail program available for puters is Thunderbird.
There’s only one problem: the default version you can download from Mozilla’s web site is still 32-bit.
Firefox – and pretty much every other piece of software out there – went 64-bit a long time ago.
So, how do you go 64-bit with Thunderbird? And why would you want to?
If you’re like most internauts these days, you use Google’s Chrome web browser.
You may have noticed that after a certain update, Chrome started displaying colors incorrectly.
The change can be subtle, like with bright blues and purples appearing slightly “off”.
Things can also appear totally wonky, and your whole browser window can be tinted red, for example.
Fortunately, this is a known problem and there’s a very easy way to fix it!
You may have read my 2013 post entitled How to Easily Resize Images in Windows.
Thanks to a comment from a reader the other day (you rock, Nick!), you don’t need Windows Live Photo Gallery anymore.
There’s a free tool available from a Microsoft engineer that you can grab and make your life WAAAY easier.
You can even resize multiple images at once anywhere on your puter – in just a few clicks and without firing up any application!
You may have heard about the new-ish web browser in town: Brave.
The trouble is that it’s a bit hard to wrap one’s head around exactly how Brave is different – and supposedly better.
Brave was created by Brave Software, a company that was founded by Brendan Eich. In case you didn’t know, Eich is the creator of JavaScript. JS is basically the web programming language that powers literally everything on the internet these days.
So, when a dude like that says, “Hey, I have an idea for a better browser!” it’s probably a good idea to at least take a good look at it…
Until now, apps were for smartphones and tablets. But that’s all about to change with PWAs: Progressive Web Apps!
PWAs are a new(ish) type of app that is web-based.
In other words, PWAs are literally web sites + JavaScript encapsulated in a window on whatever gizmo you want to install them on.
That means you can use the same app on your phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop – whether you use Windows, linux, or Mac.
Progressive Web Apps also work differently than normal apps, making them a bit more secure and privacy-oriented than traditional native apps.
So, what are these things and how do they work?